Serfdom in the Bordelais

Serfdom in the Bordelaisold' Pays Bordelais,' represented more or less exactly by the JL modern department of the Gironde, is a part of France possessing especial interest for us in England, as being the district united, during the middle ages, more continuously than any other to the English crown.From 1154 to 1453 England possessed constant claims and a varying hold over large regions in the southwest of France; and although boundaries might change, and their power was often precarious, the English kings never completely lost their hold over Bordeaux and the surrounding country during that period.Not that their possession had a marked influence on the social condition of the country; that depended far more on the character of the immediate feudal lords than on that of the distant suzerain, and if it was affected at all by the circumstance of being under English rule, it was chiefly because that rule was remote and at times more slack than it might have been had the king of France been the superior: and the seigneurs controlled their own demesnes with even less fear of interference than in other parts of the land.But, from whatever cause, the south-western corner of France was undoubtedly very distinct from the rest of the country, and its ultimate union might have been a long process even had Henry II never married Eleanor of Aquitaine.Its social conditions are in consequence full of interest, and especially the question of serfdom as it existed in medieval times.Doubtless the main characteristics of serfdom were very similar all the world over, and the homme queatau of the Bordelais did not differ in essentials VOL.XVm.-NO.LXXI.